Concern is growing over the quality and safety of care delivered to older and disabled people in their homes.

Although the vast majority of homecare is of good quality, ministers believe the system too often results in poor care, low wages and neglect – and they fear the next abuse scandal could be in this sector.

Homecare is provided to more than half a million older and disabled people in the UK. They receive help with personal care such as dressing, washing or going to the toilet, or care workers may do their shopping or help keep them connected with their local community.

Some homecare providers have been accused of failing to provide a complete service, employing poorly trained staff on low wages. And Lamb says councils are too often engaged in a "race to the bottom" when commissioning care, choosing the cheapest bid when awarding contracts.

At its worst, the homecare system sees vulnerable people receiving a 10-minute visit, being left unfed, unwashed and lying in the dark because they are unable to get out of bed.

Concerns over the quality of homecare services has already prompted charity Leonard Cheshire Disability – the UK's largest voluntary sector provider of social care services to disabled people – to put an end to bidding for future contracts providing 15-minute homecare visits for disabled people.

The charity's chief executive, Clare Pelham, told a conference this month: "Care workers are telling us that they cannot properly support disabled people to get up, to bathe, get dressed and to have breakfast in 15 minutes. This is not care. It is box-ticking. The situation has become critical. This is why we are going to stop bidding for 15-minute homecare contracts, unless the person specifically requests a short visit, for example to receive an injection.

"In the most extreme cases we have seen a tender for visits of only 10 minutes. This is entirely unacceptable. The test of a decent society is how it supports the most vulnerable. The people we support are often unable to carry out basic everyday tasks that we all take for granted."

The Guardian's Social Care Network is partnering with the Department of Health to launch a project that aims to tackle the problems of the homecare sector and transform the service. The project, dubbed the "homecare innovation challenge", is crowdsourcing ideas to improve the way the system works.

The aim is to generate debate, fresh thinking and information sharing to tackle barriers to high-quality homecare and spread good practice.

Care professionals, service users and their family and friends are being invited to offer their views on improving the commissioning and provision of homecare via a survey, which is open until midnight on Wednesday 31 July.

The best of these ideas will be showcased on the Social Care Network before the government announces in the autumn how these suggestions can be woven into policy.

Lamb said: "I'm asking for everyone from homecarers to managing directors to those receiving care to come forward and tell us how to make the system work."

• This survey has now closed.

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